The surviving papers from Vaduz and Schellenberg describe a society in which accusations of supernatural harm could become capital prosecutions. They also preserve resistance: an escaped prisoner’s family, neighbours who disputed the proceedings, a priest’s intervention and appeals beyond the local ruler. The central question is how claims about witchcraft entered a judicial system, and how that system was challenged. The records establish accusations and a struggle over justice; they do not establish that the alleged supernatural acts occurred.
The last prosecutions and the people who resisted
In the Historical Lexicon of Liechtenstein, historian Manfred Tschaikner places the final prosecutions in 1679–1680 within several earlier waves. He gives twenty deaths in 1679 and twenty-five in 1680. His figure of about two hundred documented death sentences belongs to the longer history, not those two years alone. These were the county of Vaduz and lordship of Schellenberg, rather than the later principality.
Tschaikner identifies Maria Eberle’s escape from imprisonment at Vaduz Castle in 1680 and a protest conveyed through a Feldkirch notary as a turning point. He also records the Triesen priest Valentin von Kriss’s intervention for Katharina Gassnerin in December 1680. Five other people were nevertheless executed. Resistance therefore did not immediately end the danger. The documents below show how complaints moved from local conflict towards outside examination.
A questionnaire that already supplied the story
An undated interrogation questionnaire, assigned by the archive to about 1680, contains sixty-six questions. It begins with identity, age, status and Christian belief, then asks about an alleged pact with the devil. Subsequent questions supply an elaborate narrative: written promises, the source of ink, journeys to gatherings, musicians, attendance, weather making and harm to people, animals and crops. Other questions seek the names of additional participants.
This is a prepared list, not a transcript showing that a particular accused person answered every question. Its importance lies in what the examiners expected to hear. Many questions presume the existence of the conduct they ask about. A name recorded within that framework cannot simply be treated as independent corroboration of a supernatural meeting. The document helps explain the machinery through which an allegation might acquire increasingly detailed form, while leaving each actual examination to be assessed on its own evidence.
The appeal reaches Vienna in May 1681
A chancery communication dated 2 May 1681 names complainants from Schaan, Triesenberg, Vaduz and Planken, including Maria Eberle. It reports representations made through the governor in Innsbruck and seeks intervention by the imperial authorities. The requested measures include stopping further witchcraft investigations and prosecutions pending another order, extending a commission and granting safe conduct to the petitioners.
The petitioners’ safety and the legality of local proceedings appear together. This was more than an abstract disagreement about whether magic existed: people sought protection while challenging a ruler’s officials. The letter records what the chancery recommended; it should not be mistaken for a final judgment on every prosecution. A separate imperial instruction followed ten days later.
In the instruction of 12 May 1681, Emperor Leopold I told Count Ferdinand Karl Franz von Hohenems to halt further proceedings until another imperial order. The count was to deliver the complete relevant records to the abbot of Kempten, who had received an imperial commission. An impartial university law faculty was to provide a legal opinion. The emperor also required a detailed report within two months.
That combination is significant: a pause, preservation and transfer of the papers, and examination outside the local administration. It did not amount to a modern scientific test for supernatural powers. It was a review of proceedings that could take people’s lives. Nor does the instruction mean that everyone affected could immediately return home without opposition. The September correspondence preserves the continuing dispute.
September: neighbours disagree, and the count resists
An extract of hearings on 15 and 22 September 1681 records quarrels involving Maria Eberle’s brothers Michael and Johannes. Witnesses disagreed about remarks made during an encounter at an inn in Nendeln. Michael acknowledged saying that he would help his sister with haymaking, while denying that he meant harm. Other testimony turned on whether local officials should be obeyed and whether greater authorities could be approached.
A further dispute concerned poor fruit crops. Thomas Beck maintained that witches existed; Johannes Eberle said his experience of the proceedings had changed his earlier belief. The extract also contains allegations that an imprisoned woman had been pressed into particular answers about a supposed gathering. These are reported arguments within a contested hearing, rather than independently verified descriptions of the original questioning. Their value is that opposition, doubt and competing versions survive in the record itself. The community was not speaking with one voice.
The count’s letter to the abbot of 23 September 1681 gives the opposing administrative view. He complained that the return of people who had fled was causing dangerous disputes, including difficulties at public and religious gatherings. He specifically referred to Michael and Johannes, brothers of the escaped Maria Eberle, and enclosed the hearing extract. He argued that the imperial safe-conduct order did not expressly restore unrestricted use of their property.
He sought their removal from his territory pending further directions, while saying that he would consult the commission before acting. His claims of disorder and danger should be attributed to him, not silently adopted as an explanation justifying exclusion. Read beside the hearing extract, the letter shows a struggle over whose account would reach the reviewing authority, as well as over the practical meaning of imperial protection.
A legal review, followed by more waiting
The Salzburg law faculty’s acknowledgment of 14 October 1681 confirms that the process moved beyond an instruction on paper. The faculty said that the acts, protocols and enclosures had arrived by messenger the previous evening, with the abbot’s letter of 11 October. It promised to read the criminal proceedings carefully and return a written legal opinion with the papers as soon as possible. This acknowledgment proves receipt and an undertaking to review; it is not itself the eventual opinion.
A later petition and attached authority to act show that the complainants still needed a decision. The attachment, dated 2 January 1683 at Vaduz, empowered the Vienna agent Johann Dummer to pursue the matter. Its signatories included Kriss, Christian and Michael Gassner, Andreas Rheinberger, Adam and Sebastian Hilti, and Michael Eberle explicitly acting for his sister Maria. They wanted the submitted opinions and records brought forward for judgment.
The archive’s catalogue places this entry under December 1681, but the downloadable transcription dates the petition’s receipt to 3 December 1683; its January attachment also says 1683. Those internal dates are the dates used here. The distinction prevents a later request for progress from being folded into the initial intervention. It also makes visible the time between an order to stop proceedings and the affected people’s efforts to secure an effective resolution.
Tschaikner dates the Salzburg finding that the 1679–1680 proceedings were unlawful to 1682. He distinguishes the emperor’s withdrawal of the count’s criminal jurisdiction in 1684 from the declaration of the judgments’ invalidity in 1685. Those stages should remain separate.
Reading the case without repeating the accusation
The strongest evidence here concerns the making and contesting of accusations: the assumptions built into questions, the names on appeals, the transfer of papers and the disagreement between local and imperial authority. A detailed allegation in a court file is still an allegation. Equally, a later legal reversal cannot restore the lives already lost. The resistance matters because it is documented within the same historical world as the prosecutions, rather than supplied only by hindsight.
The map uses a broad Vaduz town reference, not a private residence, prison room or alleged gathering place. The modern castle photograph provides context and does not reconstruct the seventeenth-century scene. For another account in which legal records preserve paranormal allegations and competing explanations, see Cideville’s disputed disturbances.